Balaji Srinivasan
Notizen zum Interview bei Tim Ferris
Distribution
It is the thing that engineers don’t get. Oracle has a bad / declining database product but great legacy distribution to the big corporations.
Crypto Oracles
Distributed consensus about all kinds of stuff. Could be Weather or Commodity Prices or Sport Results. Can be used as input for smart contracts. Could even disrupt Journalism as a source of truth.
e.g. https://chain.link/
Self Defense
Reduce you fix costs to expand your runway like a startup. Can be done by going to a cheap place and live like a grad student while working remotely.
Choose the peer nodes in your social graph to be robust regarding bad influence.
Use Pseudonyms not real name whenever possible.
Money can be moved from one pseudonym to another: Bitcoin -> Monero or Zcash -> Bitcoin.
It needs to be worked on moving reputation like Reddit Karma from one pseudonym to another. We need a Pseudonym Economy.
1729
A Project for education and search for exceptional talent in the 3rd world. Funded by Balaji’s Bitcoin fortune. It offers rewards payed in bitcoin to the paticipants.
paper -> scanner/printer -> full digital
banking -> paypal -> blockchain
university -> coursera/udemy -> 1729.com
Geopolitics
Balaji is bearish for the West and the USA
but bullish for the Internet and Crypto
In the West the pre-internet establishment did bank bailout’s to work against free markets and free speech. They have great distribution but a terrible product.
Internet and Crypto is to the USA like how the USA once was to the United Kingdom.
Establishment does not select their CEOs etc for talent but for connection (e.g. via elite universities).
These cannot win in a fair competition.
Crypto is against the east cost establishment. The First bitcoin block includes a head line from the London Times of that day:
00000080 01 04 45 54 68 65 20 54 69 6D 65 73 20 30 33 2F ..EThe Times 03/
00000090 4A 61 6E 2F 32 30 30 39 20 43 68 61 6E 63 65 6C Jan/2009 Chancel
000000A0 6C 6F 72 20 6F 6E 20 62 72 69 6E 6B 20 6F 66 20 lor on brink of
000000B0 73 65 63 6F 6E 64 20 62 61 69 6C 6F 75 74 20 66 second bailout f
000000C0 6F 72 20 62 61 6E 6B 73 FF FF FF FF 01 00 F2 05 or banksÿÿÿÿ..ò.
000000D0 2A 01 00 00 00 43 41 04 67 8A FD B0 FE 55 48 27 *....CA.gŠý°þUH'
You can only use force to clamp down on free speech and free markets for so long. It is like a jack in the box that will pop out some how.
Pre-Internet institutions and Middleman will be wiped out. The future is peer-to-peer.
This increases variance: some make millions, some fail completely.
An exceptions that proofs the rule might be the chinese communist party.
physical states become less legitimate while people are bonding with like-minded via internet.
this might lead to mass migrations rebuilding civil society.
City States
Successful City states like Singapore or Miami are lead by great politicians who act like startup CEOs.
People vote for their system by moving there. (consensus)
It is about community organisation. They accumulate users like tech startups. (convince oriented)
India
The acending China and the declining USA are on collision cource. India is #3
Will the US coerce the world into a digital dollar or china coerce all into a digital renminbi?
What about India - If you are not Windows or OSX, you go all in on Linux. Meaning Bitcoin and Crypto.
Rather no one controlls the currency than a foreign power controlling it.
Currently the US just need to hit a button to deplatform a country from SWIFT.
China does not trust the US Legal System and vice versa, but both can do a smart contract on the ethereum blockchain.
Symbol
In the sowjet union blue jeans were a symbol for freedom and prosperity.
Like this, the orange coin might become a symbol for these values…